We have been very happy with how the Confessor and the new Tactical Destroyer mechanics have been received by players. Industrialists and wormhole resource harvesters have been able to make huge profits off the new technology and there are numerous great examples of skilled pilots demonstrating their mastery with this flexible ship. PVP live streamers like Fintarue and video makers like Chessur have demonstrated particularly impressive performances.

The Minmatar Republic came second in the Research Race, and their engineers are getting close to having a production-ready Tactical Destroyer of their own. The Minmatar Tactical Destroyer is known as the Svipul (properly pronounciated by CCP Scarpia), and it represents many of the best aspects of Minmatar engineering.

Wielding six turret slots bonused for projectile weaponry, the Svipul is deadly with artillery and autocannons alike. It also makes excellent use of the trademark Minmatar versatility, gaining bonuses to both armor and shield resistances while Defensive Mode is active. Although its lower mass makes it a bit less suited to oversized afterburners compared to its Amarr contemporary, the Svipul is the fastest of all the Tactical Destroyers and can use that speed to pick apart unwary enemy fleets.

However I think we all know the real question on every reader’s lips is “How vertical is it?” and that is a question best answered with a picture (the following is a work in progress image of an untextured model):

(click to enlarge)

Like the Confessor before it, the Svipul has three modes with distinct physical configurations and bonuses. Unlike the Confessor, the Svipul actually pivots on an internal axis to present a horizontal profile in Propulsion Mode and a vertical profile in the default Defense Mode as well as Sharpshooter Mode.

Although the mode archetypes (Defense, Sharpshooter, Propulsion) are the same on all the Tactical Destroyers, the specific bonuses given by those modes are adapted by each Empire to fit their own needs. The stats and bonuses of the Svipul are:

Additional bonuses are available when one of three Tactical Destroyer Modes are active. Modes may be changed no more than once every 10 seconds.Defense Mode:
33.3% bonus to all shield and armor resistances while Defense Mode is active
66.6% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty while Defense Mode is activePropulsion Mode:
66.6% bonus to maximum velocity while Propulsion Mode is active
33.3% bonus to ship inertia modifier while Propulsion Mode is activeSharpshooter Mode:
33.3% bonus to Small Projectile Turret tracking while Sharpshooter Mode is active
100% bonus to sensor strength, scan resolution and targeting range while Sharpshooter Mode is active

We will of course be looking for feedback on these stats and bonuses in the comments thread, as well as on our Singularity test server once the ship is available for player testing there.

But that’s not all!

We are also making some adjustments to projectile weapons in the Tiamat release, to help tweak their balance and ensure that players have the best possible variety of viable tactics to choose from.

These changes will be familiar to those of you who remember our energy weapon tweaks from the Rhea release, as they are once again focused on two goals: improving the quality of small artillery weapons slightly and reducing the reliance of all autocannon weapons on their ‘Barrage’ Tech Two ammo.

Small Artillery:

In Tiamat we are making some adjustments to small artillery weapons to help keep them in line with other similar weapon systems. We will be increasing damage multipliers slightly while reducing tracking speed.

All small artillery will be receiving:
+10% damage multiplier
-3% tracking speed

Autocannons and Barrage:

For autocannons of all sizes, we wanted to improve the weapon class slightly while reducing the reliance on the excellent Barrage T2 ammo type. To that end, we are increasing the base falloff of all subcapital autocannons and decreasing the falloff bonus provided by Barrage ammo to match.

The end result is that falloff with Barrage loaded will remain almost identical, but there will be more situations where using another ammo type is a correct choice.

Thanks for joining me for this dev blog, and thanks in advance to all of you who will be posting constructive feedback in this blog’s comments thread. As always we plan to work with our community to ensure that these changes find their best possible version before release.

The Svipul and these projectile changes will be hitting Singularity for your testing pleasure as soon as possible, and we look forward to releasing them in our Tiamat release coming your way on February 17th.